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Polychain Capital
Polychain Capital (Polychain) is an American investment firm based in San Francisco, California. The firm focuses on investments related to cryptocurrency and blockchain technology. Background Polychain Capital was founded in 2016 by Olaf Carlson-Wee. Prior to founding Polychain, Carlson-Wee was an employee of Coinbase where he was Head of Risk. Investors of Polychain include Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, Union Square Ventures and Founders Fund. In January 2018, the firm considered holding an initial public offering on the Toronto Stock Exchange to raise $325 million but eventually decided not to proceed with it. The firm claimed $1 billion assets at the start of 2018 but dropped to $591.5 million as of the end of 2018, majorly due to the drop in the value of its holdings. Companies that Polychain Capital has invested in include Kik Messenger and Tezos Tezos is an open-source blockchain that can execute peer-to-peer transactions and serve as a platform for de ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Privately Held Company
A privately held company (or simply a private company) is a company whose shares and related rights or obligations are not offered for public subscription or publicly negotiated in the respective listed markets, but rather the company's stock is offered, owned, traded, exchanged privately, or Over-the-counter (finance), over-the-counter. In the case of a closed corporation, there are a relatively small number of shareholders or company members. Related terms are closely-held corporation, unquoted company, and unlisted company. Though less visible than their public company, publicly traded counterparts, private companies have major importance in the world's economy. In 2008, the 441 list of largest private non-governmental companies by revenue, largest private companies in the United States accounted for ($1.8 trillion) in revenues and employed 6.2 million people, according to ''Forbes''. In 2005, using a substantially smaller pool size (22.7%) for comparison, the 339 companies on ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sequoia Capital
Sequoia Capital is an American venture capital firm. The firm is headquartered in Menlo Park, California, and specializes in seed stage, early stage, and growth stage investments in private companies across technology sectors. , Sequoia's total assets under management were approximately US$85 billion. Sequoia is an umbrella brand for three different venture entities: one focused on the U.S. and Europe, another on India and Southeast Asia, and a third on China. Notable successful investments by Sequoia Capital include Apple, Cisco, Google, Instagram, LinkedIn, PayPal, Reddit, Tumblr, WhatsApp, and Zoom. History Sequoia was founded by Don Valentine in 1972 in Menlo Park, California, at a time when the state’s venture capital industry was just beginning to develop. Sequoia formed its first venture capital fund in 1974, and was an early investor in Atari the next year. In 1978, Sequoia became one of the first investors in Apple. Partners Doug Leone and Michael Moritz assumed leade ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Financial Services Companies Established In 2016
Finance is the study and discipline of money, currency and capital assets. It is related to, but not synonymous with economics, the study of production, distribution, and consumption of money, assets, goods and services (the discipline of financial economics bridges the two). Finance activities take place in financial systems at various scopes, thus the field can be roughly divided into personal, corporate, and public finance. In a financial system, assets are bought, sold, or traded as financial instruments, such as currencies, loans, bonds, shares, stocks, options, futures, etc. Assets can also be banked, invested, and insured to maximize value and minimize loss. In practice, risks are always present in any financial action and entities. A broad range of subfields within finance exist due to its wide scope. Asset, money, risk and investment management aim to maximize value and minimize volatility. Financial analysis is viability, stability, and profitability assessment ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tezos
Tezos is an open-source blockchain that can execute peer-to-peer transactions and serve as a platform for deploying smart contracts. The native cryptocurrency for the Tezos blockchain is the tez (ISO 4217: XTZ; sign: ꜩ). The Tezos network achieves consensus using proof-of-stake. Tezos uses an on-chain governance model that enables the protocol to be amended when upgrade proposals receive a favorable vote from the community. Its testnet was launched in June 2018, and its mainnet went live in September 2018. History Tezos, first proposed in 2014, was created by husband-and-wife team Arthur and Kathleen Breitman. While working at Morgan Stanley in 2014, Arthur Breitman released two papers proposing a new type of blockchain under the pseudonym "L. M Goodman", referencing a journalist at ''Newsweek'' who had misidentified the creator of Bitcoin. He chose the name "Tezos" after writing a program to list unclaimed websites that could be pronounced in English. In 2015, with the goal ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kik Messenger
Kik Messenger, commonly called Kik, is a freeware instant messaging mobile app from the Canada, Canadian company Kik Interactive, available on iOS and Android (operating system), Android operating systems. The application uses a smartphone's internet connection to transmit and receive messages, photos, videos, sketches, mobile web pages, and other content after users register a username. Kik is known for its features preserving users' anonymity, such as allowing users to register without the need to provide a telephone number or valid email address. However, the application does not employ end-to-end encryption, and the company also logs user IP address, IP addresses, which could be used to determine the user's Internet service provider, ISP and approximate location. This information, as well as "reported" conversations, are regularly surrendered upon request by law enforcement organizations, sometimes without the need for a court order. Kik was originally intended to be a mus ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Toronto Stock Exchange
The Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX; french: Bourse de Toronto) is a stock exchange located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is the 10th largest exchange in the world and the third largest in North America based on market capitalization. Based in the EY Tower in Toronto's Financial District, the TSX is a wholly owned subsidiary of the TMX Group for the trading of senior equities. The Toronto Stock Exchange was established in 1861, and incorporated by the Legislative Assembly of Ontario in 1878. The Toronto Stock Exchange became the sole Canadian exchange for senior equities in 1999. In 2002, the exchange became a publicly-traded company and rebranded from the TSE to the ''TSX'' A broad range of businesses from Canada and abroad are represented on the exchange. In addition to conventional securities, the exchange lists various exchange-traded funds, split share corporations, income trusts and investment funds. More mining and oil and gas companies are listed on Toronto Stock Exch ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Initial Public Offering
An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investment banks, who also arrange for the shares to be listed on one or more stock exchanges. Through this process, colloquially known as ''floating'', or ''going public'', a privately held company is transformed into a public company. Initial public offerings can be used to raise new equity capital for companies, to monetize the investments of private shareholders such as company founders or private equity investors, and to enable easy trading of existing holdings or future capital raising by becoming publicly traded. After the IPO, shares are traded freely in the open market at what is known as the free float. Stock exchanges stipulate a minimum free float both in absolute terms (the total value as determined by the share price multiplied by the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Founders Fund
Founders Fund is a San Francisco-based venture capital firm. Formed in 2005, Founders Fund had more than $11 billion in aggregate capital under management as of 2022. The firm invests across all stages and sectors, including aerospace, artificial intelligence, advanced computing, energy, health, and consumer Internet, with a portfolio that includes Airbnb, Lyft, Spotify, Stripe, and Oscar Health. Founders Fund was the first institutional investor in Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) and Palantir Technologies, and one of the earliest investors in Facebook. The firm’s partners, including Peter Thiel, Ken Howery and Brian Singerman, have been founders, early employees and investors at companies including PayPal, Google, Palantir Technologies, and SpaceX. History The firm was organized by Peter Thiel, Ken Howery, and Luke Nosek in early 2005 and raised its first fund of $50 million from individual entrepreneurs and angel investors in January of that year. Sean Parker, co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Union Square Ventures
Union Square Ventures (USV) is an American venture capital firm based in New York City. The firm has backed more than 130 startups, including Twitter, Etsy, Stripe, Coinbase, Zynga, Tumblr, Stack Overflow, Meetup, Kickstarter, MongoDB, Flurry, and Carta. History Union Square Ventures (USV) was founded in 2003 by Fred Wilson (a former partner of Flatiron Partners) and Brad Burnham (a former Executive in Residence with AT&T Ventures). They created USV with the intent of investing in and fostering the development of early-stage companies. Their investments are "mostly U.S.-based Internet and mobile companies considered to be ‘disruptive’". Since its establishment, USV is one of the companies that are regularly included in Red Herring’s lists of top venture capital firms. As of 2016, USV had 7 billion dollar exits, including Twitter in 2013 and Twilio in 2016. USV's 2004 fund is one of the best-performing venture capital funds in history. In 2011 USV was chosen as the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Andreessen Horowitz
Andreessen Horowitz (also called a16z, legal name AH Capital Management, LLC) is a private American venture capital firm, founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. The company is headquartered in Menlo Park, California. Andreessen Horowitz invests in both early-stage start-ups and established growth companies. Its investments span the mobile, cryptocurrency, gaming, social, e-commerce, education and enterprise IT (including cloud computing, security, and software as a service) industries. Founding and partnering Between 2006 and 2010, Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz actively invested in technology companies. Separately, and together, they invested $4 million in 45 start-ups including Twitter. During this time, the two became known as "super angel" investors. On July 6, 2009, Andreessen and Horowitz launched their venture capital fund with an initial capitalization of $300 million. In November 2010, at a time when the field of venture capitalism was contracting, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hedge Fund
A hedge fund is a pooled investment fund that trades in relatively liquid assets and is able to make extensive use of more complex trading, portfolio-construction, and risk management techniques in an attempt to improve performance, such as short selling, leverage, and derivatives. Financial regulators generally restrict hedge fund marketing to institutional investors, high net worth individuals, and accredited investors. Hedge funds are considered alternative investments. Their ability to use leverage and more complex investment techniques distinguishes them from regulated investment funds available to the retail market, commonly known as mutual funds and ETFs. They are also considered distinct from private equity funds and other similar closed-end funds as hedge funds generally invest in relatively liquid assets and are usually open-ended. This means they typically allow investors to invest and withdraw capital periodically based on the fund's net asset value, whereas pr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Coinbase
Coinbase Global, Inc., branded Coinbase, is an American publicly traded company that operates a cryptocurrency exchange platform. Coinbase is a distributed company; all employees operate via remote work and the company lacks a physical headquarters. It is the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the United States by trading volume. The company was founded in 2012 by Brian Armstrong and Fred Ehrsam. In May 2020, Coinbase announced it would shut its San Francisco, California headquarters and change operations to remote-first, part of a wave of several major tech companies closing headquarters in San Francisco in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. History 2012–2019: founding and early years Coinbase was founded in June 2012 by Brian Armstrong, a former Airbnb engineer. Armstrong enrolled in the Y Combinator startup incubator program and received a $150,000 cash infusion. Fred Ehrsam, a former Goldman Sachs trader, later joined as a co-founder after noticing Armstrong's posts o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
